“Precipitated” Spirit Portraits

In this episode, I look at the Bangs sisters, two of the most famous spirit mediums working in Chicago in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Lizzie and May Bangs became especially well known for their “precipitated” spirit portraits: images said to appear on prepared canvases during sittings, rather than being painted in the ordinary way before the audience’s eyes.

The episode focuses on who the sisters were, how their portrait sittings were described, and why the paintings became such an important part of American Spiritualist culture. I examine the methods later associated with their work, including the use of framed canvases, window light, and controlled viewing conditions, and I discuss why these portraits were treated as something more than séance curiosities. They were framed, preserved, displayed, and compared with photographs of the dead, which gave them a lasting place in Spiritualist collections.

I also spend time on the pictures themselves as physical objects. Did they look like ordinary oil paintings? The historical descriptions suggest something more unusual. Later writers and museum accounts often describe the Bangs portraits as smooth in finish, with little or no visible brushwork, rich color, and an appearance closer to softly blended portraiture than to heavily worked oil paint. Some accounts compared the effect to airbrushing.

The episode also covers specific surviving examples, including portraits linked to Queen Victoria and to Emily and Rose Carson in the Camp Chesterfield collection. Just as important, I look at reports from sitters who said the finished image resembled the deceased closely, sometimes down to details such as beard style, jewelry, or coloring.

This is an episode about mediumship, mourning, portraiture, and the question of what people believed they were seeing when a face from the dead appeared on canvas.

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